Adult Education Administrator's Manual

Instructional Services
Students

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Instruction

The Texas State Board of Education Policy Statement on adult education and literacy says: “Well-designed adult education and literacy instructional programs provide for active participation of learners and build on their prior knowledge, drawing on a lifetime of experiences as natural resources for learning. Adults construct meaning by integrating new experiences and information into what they have already learned.” The materials and content in the classroom are driven by what the students want to know. The teacher ceases to be the sole source of knowledge and becomes a facilitator of knowledge; the learner ceases to be a passive recipient of information and becomes an active participant.

Adult Education is a whole learning experience, bringing the adult student’s real world knowledge and needs (parenting, careers, money matters, culture and community) together with academic skills (reading, writing, math and critical thinking).

The combining of life skills and academic skills increases student interest and motivation and makes the classroom learning more like real life. In this way, it accelerates learning and the achievement of student goals, whether their goal is to learn English or to prepare for college. Students not only increase their knowledge of the English language and attain their GED, but also become lifelong learners.

Programs should keep a portfolio of students’ work. A portfolio is an expanded definition of assessment in which a wide variety of indicators of learning is gathered before, during and after instruction. Programs may create two folders for each student: an administrative folder and a student folder.

The administrative folder might include:

• Enrollment/Intake form
• Past school experience
• Self-assessment of what is difficult for her/him
• Diagnosis of a learning disability
• Employment history
• Initial goal statement
• Pre- and post- testing information

The student folder might include:

• Daily activity sheets
• Attendance
• Goals, timetable for completion and record of progress toward goals
• List of books/other materials read
• Dated samples of writing
• Analysis of improvements noted in writing samples
• Journals

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